Brigitte Bardot

[domino harvey]

Hell’s bells, Vie privee is a strikingly bad film-- so bad I experienced second-hand embarrassment for all participants (though less so for Malle, who should know better, even if wildly variable quality from one film to the next is an innate feature of his oeuvre). The premise is sound: Use Bardot’s real-life fame as a blueprint for playing herself and get to use actual press footage of her to boot. In reality this is such a poorly made and conceived mess, with no recognizably human characters or dramatic stakes other than those necessitated by the filmed first draft, and no ideas or concepts to make up for this deficit. I have to strongly rebut the claims found in this thread that Bardot can act: As our President-elect famously said, “WRONG.” This film more than any sells how utterly dependent Bardot was on being a “sex symbol” to further her career, because she is categorically awful here. Mastroianni fares better because he’s a superior actor by far and knows how to phone it in without completely abandoning ship, but he’s given an impossible character with no believable motivation or actions (so, in this respect and only in this respect, he is a good on-screen pairing for BB). The ending is telegraphed from a million miles away and is so obvious and stupid that there’s a special irony in how the final shot is the only part of the film that offers anything at all of value or interest, as wrong-headed as it is. Just a stunningly awful film— and I saw it French, I can’t even blame the dubbing like some people in this thread!